Urucurituba

Pronounced EW-roo-koo-re-tuba (with latin rolled R's of course)  I'll call it U-town or some version of capital U for the rest of this post.

Anyway, It has been quite some time now since I've updated this thing, and I hope I still have some readers to write to! I've nearly finished editing my pictures from the U-town and Venezuela/Boa Vista trips so that explains partly why I've not posted something in a while.  The other part of me being MIA involves my computer catching some form of electronic Ebola and dying in a matter of hours on April 1st and I was still fixing it after we got back from our trips on the 13th.

So, back to Urucurituba; it's not only a word you won't hear every day but it's also a really cool town east of manaus on the Amazon River.  "Town" is probably an incorrect term from what we would think of a town in the states, but that's what the Brazilians call it so I'll stick with them.  Anyway the posibility for incorrectness in describing U-Town is because there is proabably a hundred thousand people that live in and around the community.  You wouldn't think so, by the looks of it, but the Big-U is busteling.  The most common form of transportation in U is by motorcycle or moto-taxi which consists of a motorcycle, the driver, and sometimes, white knuckled gringos :) .  For the record, the filmadores (Eric and myself) only got "white knuckled" with the hands that held on to our cameras that were rolling whilst we road on taxis.  

Anyway U-town is aproximately 3.5 hours by car and then 1.5 hours by fast boat from Manaus or 270 Km 1 way.  Once we got to U and met the pastor of the Church where we were going to be staying with I knew we were going to be in great hands.  They had hot lunch of rice and beans and other good stuff ready for us when we got there and they had hammock hooks in the

 school rooms of the church for us to hang up at for the night.  

We spent the first day talking with people that would come by the pastor's house, the second day out on a lake that is actually some of the backwaters of the amazon, and the third day was mostly used for rest by our team with portuguese being the predominant language for most of the time.

The nights were where we really got work done.  Once again our the main focus of our group is to tell the Bible orally using segments from the Bible as if they were "stories."  Most of the stories even have a hook at the end that keeps you wanting to hear more, and that hook caught several people's faith!  We also asked the people that we told the stories and who later learned them in small groups, to share the story with someone before they came back the next night.  God was working hard on that small town for the four days that we were there, because by sunday night our group of less than 20 turned into a packed house of about 50 or more.  

Also God showed up in a big way to me personally as well.  I've been focusing on Exodus 4:11-12 and God began a change in me that weekend.  Something clicked where I began to hear things better, remember words I have learned, and think in Portuguese which gave me so much increased understanding and more ability to communicate.  I can not describe it in anyway

 other than God tearing down walls that are in front of me to help me succede.  

He did so with 2 kids named Willy and Lenard.  They both were 8 years old and I quite possibly could have been the 1st american they'd ever seen in person, much less talked to or hung out with.  Eventually I got a chance to have them read to me, in portuguese, the stories that we were supposed to be learning to tell to people and they really liked that.  They also wanted to look at my Bible and the notes I have and wanted to know what the highlighted things were, so I got to minister to them in that way as well, by looking up the same verses in a portuguese Bible and showing them.  I explained to them in rough portuguese that God is very real and very cool and that He is ALIVE and uses His word to speak to us, just as we use the stories of the Bible to allow God to reach people that can't read.  I showed them Exodus 4:11-12 and told them that when I first read that, I felt like God was speaking only to me! They smiled really big when I said this and starting throwing really fast strings of portuguese at me wanting to know more! It was awesome!! Especially beacuse Willy is growing up in the Catholic church down the street and is currently going through Catechism (sort of) classes, and he said that he'd never heard of anything like how real God is at his church or in his classes.  He thought all you had to do to get to heaven was to be a good Catholic...  

That part of the trip really hit me hard, because there are soooo many people here all over South America that think the same thing.  I've never read the entire Bible cover to cover, but I'll say I've read probably 70% or more of the new testament and I've never seen anything in there dealing with eternal life coming from an active relationship with your priest.  It's not about us.  Nothing we can do, ever, is good enough for God.  Not a person on this Earth could do enough good to get himself to heaven, nor can any person on earth get you into heaven.  God is so immensely perfect in everyway that we can not fathom Him, His plans, or His concept of mercy.  All we can do is embrace Him as being good enough for us.  Enough preaching... back to U-town.

The morning after the night I ministered to Willy and Lenard we left to come back to Manaus and the long boat/taxi ride seemed much shorter because I had so much to think about.  My biggest praise from the trip is that God increased my knowledge and ability to use Portuguese 10 fold.  Anyway sorry this has been so long in getting out!  Hope everyone is doing well! A link to all of my U-town pictures is coming soon and so is some video from moto taxi, interior houses, and video + blog about the venezuela trip!! Stay Tuned!!